Climate

NEW YORK - Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth’s second warmest year in a century.
Goddard Institute researchers used temperature data from weather stations on land, satellite measurements of sea ice temperature since 1982 and data from ships for earlier years.

January 17, 2008 07:51 AM - Reuters

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway, which last year set what it called the world's most ambitious target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, said on Thursday it aimed to go "carbon neutral" in 2030, which is 20 years earlier than its previous target.
The new target was set when the Labour-led coalition government reached agreement with three opposition parties to bring the goal forward from 2050.

January 16, 2008 07:15 AM - Reuters

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso hit back on Wednesday at criticism from member states and industry of planned radical proposals to fight climate change and save energy.
A week before the European Union executive unveils a fiercely contested package of proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, boost renewable energy sources and promote biofuels, Barroso said the EU must "put our money where our mouth is."

January 15, 2008 11:32 AM - Reuters

The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, Democrat John Dingell of Michigan, said on Tuesday he hoped to draft climate change legislation as soon as possible.
Speaking to reporters at the North American International Auto Show, Dingell said he would like a fair "cap and trade provision" in the legislation and that he continued to weigh the possibility of a carbon tax on industry.

An international team of scientists, led by Dr Edward Hanna at the University of Sheffield, has demonstrated that recent warm summers have caused the most extreme Greenland ice melting in 50 years. The new research provides further evidence of a key impact of global warming and helps scientists place recent satellite observations of Greenland's shrinking ice mass in a longer-term climatic context.

Andrew Burger posted two excellent articles on 3P here and here regarding the general state of research, science, and the modeling of climate change. I refer you to those article for a good foundation. There are also a variety of excellent resources on the web, some of which Andrew cites in his posts, and other worthwhile sources such as RealClimate, The National Academy of Sciences, USCap (an alliance of business and environmental research and advocacy groups), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

January 14, 2008 03:06 PM - Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Antarctica lost billions of tons of ice over the last decade, contributing to the rising seas around the world, a climate researcher said on Monday.
The ice melted from two particular parts of the southern continent, according to Eric Rignot and colleagues, who wrote about the phenomenon in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Research performed at Stanford and Oregon State Universities suggests that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a major contributor to global warming. Ocean fertilization, the process of adding iron or other nutrients to the ocean to cause large algal blooms, has been proposed as a possible solution to global warming because the growing algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.

Prof Watson said: "While we do envision the possibility of iron fertilisation as an effective form of carbon offsetting, we believe larger scale experiments are needed to assess the efficiency of this method and to address possible side effects.
"There remain many unknowns and potential negative impacts."

January 11, 2008 06:51 AM - Reuters

OSLO (Reuters) - Climate change is still nudging up temperatures in the long term even though the warmest year was back in 1998 and 2008 has begun with unusual weather such as a cool Pacific and Baghdad's first snow in memory, experts said.
"Global warming has not stopped," said Amir Delju, senior scientific coordinator of the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) climate program.